What do you feel when you meet a salesperson – whether you’re looking to buy a new phone for yourself, a car or equipment for the office or home? Are you happy to chat to them, confident that their aim is to help you? Or do you dread the encounter because you think they’ll put pressure on you to buy more than you need or persuade you to pay more than you planned? I suspect that most people feel the latter.
The good news is that salespeople are being trained differently these days. They’re being taught to take more of an interest in helping their customers – not just getting the order form signed. The emphasis is on getting repeat business and building good, long-term relationships with their customers rather than just aiming to ‘make a quick buck’.
But what if you’re on the other side – you’re a salesperson and you’ve got to make a living? Well, communication is the key, plus being prepared to give good customer service. When you’re with a client, you need to ask questions about their needs, listen to the answers and then think about how your product or service can help to solve their problems.
This means that you have to do planning and research first so that you understand your customer’s industry and where their business fits in. Why not have a look at this blog post: Five Ways to Develop Commercial Awareness for some ideas on this.
But if you are thinking of a career in selling – or you just need to sell your own products and services – then this is reassuring news. It means you can shake off the image of the pushy salesman, with one foot in the door. And this may be a reason why more women are going for a sales career and achieving real success. It’s often suggested that women have better ‘soft’ skills such as emotional intelligence and empathy – though you can’t generalise about things like this!
The skills you definitely do need, though, include: finding prospects, territory planning and obtaining interviews with your potential customers or getting through to them on the phone (often more difficult than you might expect). You also need to understand buying motives and what might make people resist your sales talk. You must be aware of the specific features of your product and how these can be used to benefit your customer. Before you can speak persuasively and with confidence you need to have planned your sales talk and know how to demonstrate your products effectively. Finally – and perhaps most importantly – you need to understand how to deal with objections without becoming aggressive or starting an argument, and then how to actually get that order signed!
But, if you are to have a successful career, you need to be able to communicate properly – business-like letters and emails, plus the ability to write a good report, if needed. And most important of all, if you hope to move forward in your career (by getting promotion, moving to another company or selling more of your products and services) then you need to be able to ‘sell’ yourself, by having a first-class CV and knowing how to conduct yourself at interviews.
So if you feel that a career in sales could be what you are looking for why not visit our website for more details of the course we offer or email studentservices@businesstrain.co.uk for further information.
Or call 00 44 (0)161 819 9922 for a friendly chat with one of our student services team.
Author: Diana Nadin
